EXPERIAN is to close three contact centres in the North West of England with the loss of around 850 jobs, it has emerged.

The credit checking company, part of Argos owner GUS, said the facilities at Preston, Bolton and Widnes would be phased out over the next two years.

The move will see 300 posts lost at Preston before July and follows a review of the sites, which carry out work on behalf of other companies.

The heaviest number of job losses will be at Preston where Experian has a call centre manned by 600 staff, including 150 temporary workers.

Withdrawal from its remittance processing business, which handles transactions made using credit cards or credit accounts, will affect 116 staff at Bolton and 150 employees at Widnes.

Experian commercial director Keith Valentine said it was not economically viable to keep the facilities open with competition coming from China and India where labour costs were low.

"The market place for contact centres has changed considerably in the past two to three years," he said.

Investment

"Significant investment would be required to bring the centres up to the level of economic efficiency required to make them competitive with world-class specialists in this area."

Experian has a worldwide workforce of 13,000 with a quarter of its staff in the UK, mainly at its Nottingham headquarters.

The group said it was talking to clients to guarantee that contracts would be fulfilled and consultations were also taking place with staff whose jobs were due to be lost.

In a trading statement earlier this month, Experian reported a 10% leap in sales at constant exchange rates - its fourth consecutive six-month period of double digit growth.

Although the division saw a 2% reduction in sales growth at its North America arm due to the slowdown in the mortgage refinancing market, this was offset by double-digit growth at Experian International.